Sunday, November 25, 2012

Cheering at the Seattle Marathon

This morning thousands of runners and spectators in Seattle seriously lucked out, because the weather was awesome for the Seattle Marathon and Half-Marathon. And by awesome, I mean it wasn't freezing rain, like it was last year!

Eloise was very excited to come along and cheer with me and has been looking forward to it for several days. We made our signs yesterday and packed up our cowbells for the big day. Unfortunately Eloise had an awful night of being awake a lot, but when I whispered that it was time to get up she practically rocketed out of bed! We got dressed, grabbed some water and snacks (and thankfully hats and gloves!) and drove straight to the Starbucks drive-thru. THEN we drove over to my favorite runner-watching spot along the course.

There were so many more spectators this year than there were last year! That, of course, was fantastic, but I panicked a bit and had to park further away than I planned. I worried we would miss "our runners". Thankfully we weren't too late and caught almost everyone we wanted to see.

Eloise and I cheered and rang our cowbells and held our signs. Mine said "You are AWESOME" and Eloise made hers all by herself, it said "YOU CAN DO IT!". She absolutely loved standing with her hand out to catch high-fives. We noticed that the faster the runners were, the less likely they were to interact with you or slap a high-five, so we personally had more fun the slower the runners got. We stuck around for quite a while after the people we came to see were past and the runners were just so amazing. It was fun to watch them all.

We cheered for the runners we knew, we cheered for the mother runners, we cheered for the girls (and one guy!) wearing sparkle skirts, we cheered for runners with their arm in a sling, we cheered for the runners who cheered for us. We cheered for everyone!

Last year I watched the runners with tears in my eyes, it was really inspiring to watch them all running so strong. This year I just smiled and cheered, happy for everyone who was out there, and happy that we could support them in our little way.

Man, now I don't know if I want to run the race next year . . . . or stake out my spot on the corner with my sign, cowbell, and Starbucks latte!

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Running my first 50k

Thank you for stopping by! I have been writing this blog for ten years (crazy!). It began as a way to document my life raising my daughter-- yep, when the blog started I only had one! Now that I have two daughters pushing their pre-teens I have shifted the focus of my blog to my passion for running and fitness. Mostly this blog serves as an online journal, so on any given day I might write a post about any different topic that interests me, such as parenting, writing, reading, health and fitness, home schooling and public schooling, being a stay-at-home mom and wife, travelling and pretty much everything else!